• Question: Why are people born blind

    Asked by to Kevin, Fiona on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      Good question. Generally people are blind, or become blind, for one of three reasons:

      They have an accident
      They get a very bad eye infection
      They have a genetic condition

      If you are born blind then most of the time it’s likely to have a genetic cause. Your eyes are amazingly complicated, so I’d guess that there are hundreds of your 25000 genes that are needed to make the proteins that make an eye, and make it work. If you had a mutation in one of those genes (in fact usually both copies of one of the genes that helps build an eye or make it function) then your eye either wouldn’t be built properly or couldn’t function properly, so either you couldn’t see or you couldn’t see very well. Because most mutations are recessive and very rare the parents wouldn’t be affected and would probably be completely unaware that they could pass on the condition.

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